What it's like to be a Black woman with Anxiety (For those of you that aren't)
After Patricia Smith
You’re running
from hands reaching
with malice.
Unfamiliar eyes
watching.
They are
always watching.
Bitter voices taunting
with questions you
cannot answer.
A fear that you
cannot name.
They call your terror
noisy. Broken.
Your body is all
sharp edges. It’s just
too much. Too much. Too much
anger, to hold you softly.
Your heart's all made up
of glass fragments,
bending white light
into rainbows.
And they ask you,
“What else are you
besides a broken thing
that no one knows how to fix?”
Mind always shattered,
despair always spilling.
They ask you,
“What is the sky but
another place your hands
will never reach?”
The overflow of blue.
A loneliness you can only imagine.
A voice that isn’t yours,
flooding every room.
Every morning,
God paints rainclouds
on your skin.
The sunlight bends.
Delicate, ethereal. Not like
you, your legs still running
from rough voices
and rough existence.
From dangers
they don’t understand.
But somewhere, the sky
is pouring into someone
else’s mirrors, too.
Endless color, swallowed
by mahogany skin. A sanctuary
of afros and knotless braids,
crowned with golden halos.
In this place, there is
only gentle touch.
In this place, there is
only joyful rain.
In this place, there is
only bright music.
“I see you, sis!”
“You made it, sis!”
“I love you, sis!
A familiar feeling
of warmth. Acceptance
envelops you. Your reflection
smiles, just for a moment.
There is nothing
to run from anymore.
Paradise
Here, She is the Sun,
the ocean,
the sand,
the silence,
the crashing waves.
She is her own sanctuary.
It is Her
purifying the air,
It is Her
turning over fresh soil,
It is Her
tending to the dead,
It is Her
nurturing what has survived,
It is Her
healing the bruises.
They are Hers.
Here, She is the Moon,
Emerging from darkness,
She exhales,
Her burdens departing
Searching for a peace
which has always been Hers.
She reimagines Herself garden,
caresses silken meadows,
and rippled valleys,
Her body bearing honey halos,
Lips giving way to recreation,
voicing tender incantations:
Loneliness will not live here.
Self-hate will not thrive here.
In this place, only love is born from emptiness,
And solitude feels less like isolation
and more like revived inspiration.
Here, I replenish and rest when necessary.
Here, I forgive myself for failures,
have patience with the demons I have yet to destroy.
Here, fear evaporates into oblivion, and I am powerful.
Here, my eyes make love to my own reflection, and I am beautiful.
Here, I will recover. Here, there is hope.
Here, I am free of judgment and despair.
Here, I am loved because I love myself
And that in and of itself
is enough.
Because I am enough.
Here, I can exist
with all my flaws, and all my faults,
forgiven.
Every Day I Walk
Every day I walk
through a world that has never once believed in me
Yet my apathy is sin
My name a handful of pixie dust daydreams
Like dropped pennies
I am what prayers look like when they've lost value
Told them my faith is a ricocheted bullet
Told them
That I cannot for the life of me comprehend why a being
would want to claim
The disappointment
Manifesting within his creation
This body slick with the filth of my mistakes
I don't want to track mud on God’s carpet
Don't want to stain His polished white facilities
I scrub my skin raw with holy water
Let him free himself from my impurities
I don’t repent for being ‘a non-believer’
Instead
I ignore the stares, avoid conversation
Start jumping off buildings as a coping mechanism
Thought maybe if I kept doing it, one day I might fall away from here
Might crumble like battered drywall
My body an abandoned shell
A husk for passing strangers to take ownership of
My body a vacuum
Sucks in dirt and grime to make others feel comfortable
No longer an instrument of nourishment
But a wasteland of dead voices to never be heard
Every day, I walk
Like my fear of God hasn’t doused me in gasoline
Stepping carelessly through conquered lands
Sauntering through flames
Like I’m ready to die
I wonder what I look like
To my family
To the church
To my father and his ‘Father’
Family is always unrecognizable in the rapture
Eyes ache from the overflow of tears
Without warning, everything is washed away in the blood
High heels nailed to the carpet
I attempt to flee but am buried beneath the weight of my shame
Guilt swallows the hearts of the reborn
We must grab ahold of this poor girl’s spirit
And remind her who she belongs to
I am surrounded by the saints
Held captive by their ignorance of what I feel
The quiet room fills
With sobbing prayers
And I am still silent
And I am still suffocating
And I am trying to unclench my fists
But I am angry
They are cleansing their sins
with what they believe to be my misguided sorrow
Their eyes invade my everything
So, I ask
Do I disgust you?
Does my body reek of disobedience?
Every day I walk through self-righteousness
A stranger vomits his interpretation
Of what I feel on my floors
And demands that I pay for his unwanted service
Words slither out of his throat with such confidence
As if he is holding my hand to console someone else
As if my tears are his opportunity to impress with decaying language
Only a corpse could understand
He sculpts me in God’s discarded image, a breathing skeleton
No muscle or tendons left to cradle the bones
No tattered skin to shield me from this uninvited guest
Who cracks open my ribcage like it's a toy box
My spine bends beneath his reckoning
Slicing through my remains
And nothing is left of me
My shaky breath a ‘satanic attack’
No depression or anxiety
Just demons, whispering sweet woes and despair
Claiming me as theirs because if I don’t belong to a God
Then I’m just up for grabs, right?
This disconnection from the gospel
Just a simple questioning
Doesn’t define my existence
In my mind, religion is a whispered symphony
Unheard by some, but cherished by many
A humming reminder of hope
Always left to hover in my memories
Swallow the Fear
She whispered,
and from her lips rose
a typhoon
of chaos and smoke.
Sunlight soaked into her very soul.
She, magician of language.
Crimson wine cascading through veins
as she dances to her own joyful rhythm.
Her spirit eternal, everlasting.
Transferring hopeful energies from tragedy,
mending choking grief into melodious remedies.
I wish to be more like her.
When I sit alone in silence
I breathe in the quiet
I exhale,
and in my palms
appears a storm.
The fear of judging eyes
clouding my truth.
Sometimes, my voice is not my own
It's what everyone else wants to hear.
It flows like water into my fists as I speak.
My courage freezes over,
I tremble,
forget my own name.
But she teaches me everything I must know
She tells me the truth about loneliness.
The danger of isolation,
It is not my friend.
It does not care about my spine,
or my will to live happily.
She warns me,
“It will step on both, every time.”
She tells me,
“The only way to overcome it,
is to swallow the fear,
and live.”
Revival
I wish to build myself a body
that won’t abandon me
when depression clasps itself
around my neck.
When anxiety hangs from it
like a jewel.
I wish for my weaknesses to transform
into strengths.
I wish to paint myself into a fearless woman,
who doesn’t take shit from anyone,
doesn’t seek approval from anyone,
can’t have her heart broken by anyone.
I wish to be wanted
by my own self.
To be satisfied with being
alone and in love with myself.
I wish for the voice in my head
to be kinder to me.
Softer to me.
Patient with me.
Less afraid.
I wish to hear myself again.
I wish for the kind of joy
that doesn’t melt away
in the sun.
I wish to breathe in an atmosphere
that doesn’t make me feel
like I am suffocating
beneath my own skin.
A calm that isn’t born
from the blood of a storm.
A softness that lingers
when I am lost,
when the world withers,
when the journey must end,
and when a new one must begin.
Growing Pains
I remember choices,
and their consequences.
Listen girl,
his persona will decompose.
Slowly.
Mutating.
Becoming a skeleton of discontinued eulogies
because there is nothing left
to be said.
There are no questions
that can be answered
without opening the coffin.
Betrayal is a tortuous treatment
for someone once treated like a treasure
He lies to you,
and yet you still
drape yourself over the casket.
Drowning yourself,
Over,
and over,
and over again,
until your body is the ocean
he swims in.
Listen girl,
these men who do not die
do not intend on leaving
before taking pieces of you with them.
Do not let his secrets shatter you.
He is the only coward here.
Too fearful to face the demons
he summoned himself,
he will not scar you.
Fast forward five months later,
you will crumble beneath the corpse of the memory.
Pain left unburied,
still fermenting in your subconscious.
His stench will linger
around your heart’s hope like smoke
reminding you to never again trust so easily.
Promise me, girl,
You will craft stories only
Of the most beautifully refined
Bits of reality
Succumb to
Serendipity,
From emptiness emerges epiphany
You will take this pain and
Forge it into serenity.
Take tears, transform,
Transcend to tranquility.
Listen girl,
Cry a river of red thread if you need to
Let his shadow coalesce into the darkened past,
Let his afterimage disperse and let him go.
Let the anger dissolve.
These pages bled enough for the both of us.
These scribblings became scripture,
quenched your thirst for syllables,
this language you created out of discarded affirmations.
Set aflame, it broke the curse, and birthed a miracle
And girl,
you are the miracle.